Once again you're quoting an article that works against the Book of Mormon at least as much as it supports it.
Anciently, iron was never melted or cast in the Near East. The earliest known examples of casting liquefied iron are from China in the fourth century B.C. "Due to its high melting point (1540 degrees C), iron was never worked as a molten metal during the [Near Eastern] Iron Age … Iron had to be hammered, the blacksmith first having to consolidate a hot, spongy bloom of iron mixed with slag. By hammering out the slag he was able to produce a usable lump of iron. In order to … use that iron, however, it was necessary to reheat the lump of iron and forge the hot metal to the desired shape."3
Note that the term "smelt" is never used in the Book of Mormon. This, again, is a modern conflation of ancient and modern concepts and practices.
So, we learn that "iron was never melted or cast in the Near East." But we have Nephi telling us the following:
9 And I said: Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make atools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me?
10 And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools.
11 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make a bellows wherewith to ablow the fire, of the skins of beasts; and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire.
16 And it came to pass that I did amake tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.
So, no, smelt is not used, but the smelting process is described. And what kind of ore was being smelted, according to the apologists?
Here's Kerry Shirts:
At Abha they found four iron ore deposits. A Saudi Archaeological and engineering team identified ten sites which yielded *tons* of ancient slag of gold, copper, and iron, as well as the ancient remains of smelters. Nephi could have easily learned his blacksmithing here as well. The Book of Mormon is not incorrect in noting this ancient science was had in Arabia.
The apologetics approach seems thus far to say that the metals were worked, not smelted. Here's Daniel Peterson:
The verb to smelt does not occur in the Book of Mormon, in any of its forms, so it is not entirely clear what we are to conclude from this "question." Only once, in early Jaredite history, do we seem to find a reference to the process (Ether 7:9). Iron was, evidently, relatively rare in the ancient New World, as the Book of Mormon itself attests. But iron of one origin or another was indisputably present and used in pre-Columbian America, and the question of whether or not iron was ever smelted in Mesoamerica is by no means closed. Several tons (tons!) of worked iron ores were very recently found at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, in southern Mexico.
But the Book of Mormon describes smelting (even if it doesn't use the word), not metalworking.
Again, this is not a serious argument, why me.